Life-long customer relations with Global Support

Four regional support centres

The vice president has quite an ambition. "To fulfil promises and give our customers professional service, to build up four Kongsberg Maritime regional centres in Kongsberg, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and New Orleans, Louisiana in the U.S. From these offices, Kongsberg Maritime will be able to give customers 24-hour support within the same time zone. Spare parts for all Kongsberg Maritime's products will also be available at the centres. "The support centres are supplements to our regional offices. The goal is for every region to be self-contained, but it is natural and desirable that the regional offices cooperate and help each other as needed. It is also desirable and necessary to have close links to headquarters in Kongsberg", emphasises Mastervik.

"What is the idea behind the reorganisation of the support function?

"We want our customers to know they can trust us. If they buy our products, they should know that we will not give up until we have found solutions if they encounter problems", points out Mastervik.

Kongsberg Maritime has highly qualified service and support engineers with long experience of Kongsberg products. They can also coordinate work across the company, and provide support for other Kongsberg products.

Customer satisfaction

Kongsberg Maritime strives to maintain a dialogue with its customers also outside situations involving support work, and will see to it that customers are kept up to date on improvements and new versions of our equipment. Towards year end this year, a user seminar will be organised in Macaé, Brazil. The goal of the seminar is to have closer contact with our customers, so that they can give us feedback on the products and systems supplied by Kongsberg.

"We also want to be pro-active. We have hired key support managers who will contact our customers regularly and get feedback from them on what we can do better. By systematising and structuring this feedback, we hope to further enhance customer satisfaction during the support phase", remarks Mastervik.

Kongsberg Maritime's support department answers numerous inquiries. Each day, the support centre in Kongsberg receives about 250 emails and 170 telephone calls. "To maintain a high level of customer satisfaction, our goal is to offer world-wide 24/7 telephone support, and to respond to e-mails received by 2 p.m. on the very same day, and with a guaranteed response time on e-mails within 48 hours. This applies 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year", points out Mastervik.

Support desk

At the same time as Kongsberg Maritime is building up its regional support centres, the company is striving to devote its attention to harbours, for example, ports of call for LNG carriers. "Our goal is to be present in harbours or areas wherever our customers are located", underlines Mastervik. The company is also in the process of expanding its network of agents. The agents will definitely benefit from the regional centres.

"They will have access to the service desks we've established at the support centres, and thus be able to retrieve all historical data, allowing them to be as well-prepared as possible before meeting with customers", clarifies the vice president, Global Support.Besides being available by telephone 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, Kongsberg Maritime has made a special website for global support with search functions to give our customers easy access to information about the nearest support centre, including all the requisite contact information", says Mastervik.

Offering remote diagnostics

In addition, Kongsberg Maritime can offer remote diagnostics to assist customers.

"We have built up a support centre in Kongsberg. There, we offer technical expertise on all Kongsberg products to be able to provide swift responses to complex queries. The support centre is also staffed outside ordinary working hours. From there, we can tap into customers' systems to give operators help with critical operations, and to resolve technical problems", continues Mastervik.

"Moreover, we are in the process of building up a global training system so that we can offer courses and training close to our customers. On-site courses are more cost-efficient than if the customer has to send participants to courses in Norway", says the vice president of Global Support, who is eager and enthusiastic about the cost-efficient global support programme for all Kongsberg products 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.